Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Tortured Consensus

"In a series of high-level meetings in 2002, without a single dissent from cabinet members or lawmakers, the United States for the first time officially embraced the brutal methods of interrogation it had always condemned.

This extraordinary consensus was possible, an examination by The New York Times shows, largely because no one involved — not the top two C.I.A. officials who were pushing the program, not the senior aides to President George W. Bush, not the leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees — investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques they were approving with little debate." from The New York Times

Administration and civil service employees not doing their research. Hmmm. It's plausible. We were told that the late Saddam Hussein was building up his non-existent weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq and were proven wrong.

They didn't even know of the plan's effectiveness? Why didn't they check the veracity of the program? Didn't they want to know if the program they were seeking to implement would work?

The Idiot Defense:

"Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who in 2002 was the ranking Democrat on the House committee, has said in public statements that she recalls being briefed on the methods, including waterboarding. She insists, however, that the lawmakers were told only that the C.I.A. believed the methods were legal — not that they were going to be used."

I don't think, therefore I know not.

Please tell me, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, that you didn't tell the news reporter anything remotely close to what is described above. How could you not know that the CIA would use whatever methods they can if they were deemed legal? Denial. Denial. Denial.

A--anine Rules Impede Advice and Consent:

"Vicki Divoll, general counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2002 and a former C.I.A. lawyer, would have been a logical choice to advise senators on the legal status of the interrogation methods. But because of the restricted briefings, Ms. Divoll learned about them only years later from news media accounts."

About Me

I'm a college graduate with a B.A. in political science and a minor in journalism who worked for a local newspaper.
As my title suggests, I'm a political heretic with moderately conservative to a moderately conservative perspective though I have a great deal of respect for and adherence to the libertarian and radically centrist points of view as well.
If you wanted a breakdown politically, you could say I'm slightly right of center on foreign policy (with a strong affinity with the realist school of thought), slightly left of center on the cultural issues, and probably dead center on fiscal issues and the entitlements. But this is not entirely accurate either. Sometimes I go left and right at the same time on the same issue.
I am an independent republican (small "r") who has voted for Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, and Green Party candidates who has voted for candidates from the Republican, Democratic and third parties.